Ulster's Stand For Union eBook

Liberals hoped and believed that this promise of support
for the “rebellious” attitude of Ulster
would alienate British opinion from the Unionist party.
The supporters of the Government in the Press daily
proclaimed that it was doing so. When Parliament
adjourned for the summer recess, at the beginning
of what journalists call “the silly season,”
Mr. Churchill published two letters to a constituent
in Scotland which were intended to be a crushing indictment
both of Ulster and of her sympathisers in Great Britain.
The Ulster menace was in his eyes nothing but “melodramatic
stuff,” and he sneeringly suggested that the
Unionist leaders would be “unspeakably shocked
and frightened” if anything came of their “foolish
and wicked words.” The letter was lengthy,
and contained some telling phrases such as Mr. Churchill
has always been skilful in coining; but the “turgid
homily—­a mixture of sophistry, insult,
and menace,” as The Times not unfairly
described it, was less effective than the terse and
simple rejoinder in which Mr. Bonar Law pointed out
that Mr. Churchill’s onslaught wounded his father’s
memory more deeply than it touched his living opponents,
since Lord Randolph’s “incitement”
of Ulster was at a time when Ulster could not be cast
out from the Union without the consent of the British
electors.

Mr. Churchill’s epistles to Scottish Liberals
started a correspondence which reverberated through
the Press for weeks, breaking the monotony of the
holiday season; but they entirely failed in their purpose,
which was to break the sympathy for Ulster in England
and Scotland. In March the Unionists had won
a seat at a by-election in South Manchester; the victory
at Crewe in July, which so cheered the gathering at
Blenheim, was followed by still more striking victories
in North-west Manchester in August, and in Midlothian—­Gladstone’s
old constituency—­in September; and perhaps
a not less significant indication of the trend of
opinion so far as the Unionist party was concerned,
was given by the local Unionist Association at Rochdale,
which promptly repudiated its selected candidate who
had ventured to protest against the Blenheim speech
of the Unionist leader. In an analysis of electoral
statistics published by The Times on the 24th
of August it was shown that, in thirty-eight contests
since the General Election in December 1910, the Unionists
had gained an advantage of more than 32,000 votes over
Liberals. And shortly afterwards, at a dinner
in London to three newly elected Unionists, Mr. Bonar
Law pointed out that the results of by-elections,
if realised in the same proportion all over the country,
would have given a substantial Unionist majority in
the House of Commons.